Global Europe: The European Union in World Affairs by Christopher Piening; Foreign Policyof the European Union: From EPC to CFSP and Beyond by Elfriede RegelsbergerReview by: Stanley HoffmannForeign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1998), p. 154Published by: Council on Foreign RelationsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20048829 .

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Recent Books

Forced to Choose: France, the Atlantic

Alliance, and NATO?Then and Now.

BY CHARLES G. COGAN. Westport:

Praeger, 1997,158 pp. $55.00. The two great merits of this short and

well-researched volume, by a former high

intelligence officer turned scholar, are a

clear presentation of the many tracks and

detours of French security policy between

1945 and 1951 and a convincing demonstra

tion of the continuity of French concerns

and purposes until this day. Post-1945 France had many handicaps: the legacy of the defeat of 1940, a determination to

keep Germany weak, a desire for a bal

ancing role between East and West, and a

difficult relationship with Britain, which wanted to act as the indispensable inter

mediary between Washington and the

European continent. It also faced a

constant inability to keep the United States to the role of a major participant in European security, so as to keep the

Soviets out and the Germans down, but

not a dominant partner. After reading this book, American statesmen and jour nalists who say that French demands for

a reshaping of nato are diversions or ab

surdly pretentious will have no excuse for

continuing to ignore the seriousness,

depth, and longevity of French policy.

Global Europe: The European Union in

WorldAffairs. by christopher

piening. Boulder: Lynne Rienner,

1997, 252 pp. $49.95 (paper, M-95)

Foreign Policy of the European Union: FromEPCto CFSP and Beyond,

edited

BY ELFRIEDE REGELSBERGER ET AL.

Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1997,

406 pp. $55.00.

These two volumes?which overlap a

great deal?provide a comprehensive and

detailed account of the attempt by the

European Community, now the European

Union, to develop a common foreign

policy despite many of its members'

ambivalence and a loose institutional

structure that reflects it. The academics

and officials who have contributed to the

second volume provide a fuller account

of the historical evolution of this attempt, and a better one of the Europeans' fiascoes

in Somalia and in the Yugoslav crisis, as

well as of the uncertain role of the parlia ment and the commission and the limited

effectiveness of the Western European Union in defense matters. Neither volume

covers the 1997 Amsterdam agreement? a definite, if still small, step forward.

Piening, an official of the European

Parliament, concludes with a plea against

the unanimity rule and against a "multi

speed, multi-layered Europe." One of the

editors of the other volume, Philippe de Schoutheete de Tervarent, Belgium's

permanent representative to the European

Union, tends to agree on the first point, but he is more willing than Piening to

accept a differentiated Europe in which

some countries will be able to move closer

together, and faster, than the others.

Thatchers Diplomacy: The Revival of British Foreign Policy,

by paul sharp.

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997,

269 pp. $65.00. A University of Minnesota political

scientist, Sharp points out that Thatcher

was both an enthusiast of global economic

liberalism and a champion of the nation

state, and he believes that this apparent

To order any book reviewed or advertised in Foreign Affairs, call 800-255-2665.

[154] FOREIGN AFFAIRS -Volume 77 N0.2

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